Jamie Whincup and Craig Lowndes win eventful Bathurst 12 hour

Supercars Championship team-mates Jamie Whincup and Craig Lowndes won the 2017 Bathurst 12 Hour race for Ferrari team Maranello Motorsport, together with Finnish driver Toni Vilander.

The trio headed the field for close to half the race, but came under pressure from the factory-backed Mercedes team Scott Taylor Motorsports, with drivers Shane van Gisbergen, Maro Engel and Craig Baird towards the end of the race.

Whincup pitted with one hour left of the race while van Gisbergen stayed out, setting fast lap times. Van Gisbergen managed to get out ahead of his Triple Eight Race Engineering team-mate thanks to not changing tyres on his stop.

But the joy was short-lived as van Gisbergen clashed with the Andrew MacPherson in the #51 Porsche. The safety car was called out and van Gisbergen given a drive-through penalty.

Things got worse when the race resumed when van Gisbergen spun off into the barriers on his own shortly after the restart, leaving his co-driver Engel fuming.

“It’s not motorsport in my book. All I’ve seen this week is a lot of mistakes from Shane. It’s a tough one,” said Engel.

Engel later apologised to van Gisbergen who gave his view on what happened.

“I just stuffed up and put the car in the wall. I was pushing on the limit and sometimes over it, we were just so slow on the straight. As I said it’s my mistake and I’ll be angry at myself until the next race and push on,” said van Gisbergen.

This left the field open for Whincup, who won the race one lap ahead of the Competition Motorsports Porsche the trio of Matt Campbell, Marc Lieb, Patrick Long and David Calvert-Jones.

Steven Kane crossed the line in third for Bentley Team M-Sport with co-drivers Guy Smith and Oliver Jarvis to claim the final podium spot, a further 18 seconds behind.